Sharing Administrative Services Across Jurisdictions

In the spring/summer of 2014, the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) conducted a national survey to determine how local governments share administrative services, such as billing, information technology, purchasing, and finance and accounting in conjunction with running their public health departments. From the survey results, three jurisdictions were identified for case studies examining in greater detail how such collaborations work in the selected jurisdictions and to identify the specific elements that make such arrangements successful and potentially replicable elsewhere. This report documents the findings from the national survey and three case studies. The information in the report will be helpful to public health and other local government service areas operating under continued fiscal constraints.

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Fiscal and Service Issues: The strong majority of local governments that currently share services recommend doing so to other local governments and reported experiencing benefits of cost savings and efficiencies.

Research and Evaluation: This report provides extensive information on survey methodology, questions, responses and regional interpretation.

Surveillance / Data Sharing: The ICMA conducted a national survey with 1,119 local governments responding (24% response rate), with the lowest response rates among local governments with populations over 1 million and in the East South-Central geographic region.

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